Today in History, 10/18

1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.
1356: The Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroys the town of Basel, Switzerland.
1648: The Boston Shoemakers form the first U.S. labor organization.
1685: Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of France's Protestant population, the Huguenots..
1767: The Mason-Dixon line, a survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania, is completed.1775: The African-American poet Phillis Wheatley is freed from slavery.1851: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
1867: The United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.
1892: The first long distance telephone line between Chicago and New York is opened.
1908: Belgium annexes the Congo Free State.
1922: The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
1925: The Grand Ole Opry opens in Nashville, Tennessee.
1926: Chuck Berry is born.

1927: George C. Scott is born. He's most famous for playing Patton, but his turn as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is also great. Since I did Alistair Sim's confrontation with Marley's ghost for his birthday a few days ago, here's George's version of the same scene.

1935: Peter Boyle is born.

1938: Dawn Wells is born. She played Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. I liked her better than Ginger, but honorable men can disagree.1939: Lee Harvey Oswald is born.1945: The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1946: Howard Shore is born. He did the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings movies as well as The Silence of the Lambs and a bunch of others.
1947: Joe Morton is born. He played the doomed cyberneticist Dr. Miles Dyson in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.1951: Pam Dawber is born.1954: Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio.
1967: The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.1975: Alex Cora, utility infielder for the Boston Red Sox is born.Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.